Outside, the muggy March afternoon had turned thunderous. Silver slugs of drizzle were trailing down the big square hospital windows. Nick could never suppress a mild outrage when the Cape weather was poor, in spite of rain always being sorely needed. They were out to dinner that night and he didn’t have a coat, let alone an umbrella.
Pat Driscoll, his secretary, put her head round the door. ‘Your wife just left a message. She’s running late and will meet you at the restaurant. She said she tried your mobile but it was off.’
Nick rummaged for his phone, lost under the pile of papers on his desk. As usual he had put it on silent for a consultation and then forgotten. ‘Thanks Pat.’
His secretary hesitated, hanging off the door. ‘Is it still okay for me to go early?’
‘Oh goodness, your daughter’s birthday, how could I have forgotten? Yes, go now. This minute,’ he commanded with mock ferocity when still she hovered. ‘And I’m on an admin stint, you’ll be pleased to hear.’ He rattled his in-tray, a pagoda of papers and patient files. ‘No stone unturned.’
Pat laughed. ‘Thanks, Doctor Wharton, see you tomorrow.’ She paused to adjust the Monet print that hung beside the door. A few minutes later he heard the soft thwack of her footsteps receding down the corridor.
Nick turned his phone’s volume back on, wryly noting the number of missed calls from his wife. The dinner was with old family friends of hers, a couple she liked and he barely knew, so the chances were she would let it pass. With Donna, one never knew.
Nick sighed, embarking on a desultory shuffle through his in-tray and then shifting his attention to the greater administrative task of filing emails. He worked quickly and ruthlessly, going back over the weeks to weed out whatever correspondence he could, and saving more important letters under their various relevant subject tabs. It was thirty minutes before he reached January and the flurry of exchanges with old friends. Seeing Kat Keating’s name, Nick experienced a sudden visceral memory of the turmoil she had once caused him; a reminder of what he had eventually been so relieved to walk away from twenty years before.
And yet it would be decent to round things off, he reasoned, give them a proper end.
Pressing the reply button, he wrote:
Dear Kat,
Just a quick, very late thank-you for your reply. Trust me when I tell you that I am happy – and not remotely surprised – to hear how well life has turned out for you.
As you say, good luck with the next forty.
Cheers,
Nick
As he pressed send, his mobile rang, displaying Donna’s number. Nick picked it up at once, saying warmly, ‘Hello, hon, Pat gave me your message. That’s fine. I’ll meet you there. I just hope it’s something nice that’s caused your change of plan?’
There was an audible intake of breath, warning him that the warmth hadn’t been enough. ‘I know your patients matter more to you than I do, Nick. I know that. But if you could just do a better job of hiding the fact from time to time then I would be most grateful. And don’t call me hon. I have a name, and, funnily enough, I am quite attached to it…’
‘I did not mean to upset you,’ Nick interjected hurriedly.
‘No, you never do,’ she said bitterly.
‘I’m looking forward to dinner,’ Nick tried again, determined not to rise to the bait but marvelling, as always, at his wife’s readiness to be angered. ‘A great idea of yours to go there. Pat said she saw a review saying it’s the new best place for seafood, better even than Riley’s.’
‘Yes, well…’
Detecting a softening, he took heart. ‘It’s lucky one of us has her finger on the pulse.’
‘It’s not cheap,’ Donna admitted, ‘but then top-quality things seldom are…’
Nick noted, with some astonishment, that a reply from Kat had dropped into his inbox. He reached for the mouse and clicked it open:
By the way, I’m glad you grew to like being a doctor.
Donna was still talking, appeased in exactly the way he had hoped, moving from the merits of the restaurant to the promise to drop in on her father, which had warranted the last-minute change of her evening schedule. ‘It will mean two cars between us tonight which is crazy, but—’
‘Take a taxi. Then you can enjoy a drink.’
She laughed. ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’
‘Of course,’ Nick assured her happily, relief at the truce flooding him as it always did. ‘It’s a weeknight, so I’m only going to have a glass anyway. Give the girls a kiss for me.’
‘Okay. See you later.’
Nick put the phone down and, after thinking for a moment, wrote back to Kat:
Did I say I like doctoring??!! But yes, I suppose I do. Mostly. Got to go now. Might drop a line another time. Nick.
When yet another reply popped into his inbox a couple of minutes later, he shook his head in bemusement.
Write if you want,
She wrote this time.
but no raking up of the past, okay? And nothing ‘personal’, thank you very much. At least not if you expect a reply.
He typed back, chuckling
I’ll bear that in mind.
For the next hour Nick continued with the administrative duties he had set himself, while other, broader memories of the Keating sisters drifted into his mind. It was impossible to discount Eleanor, he reflected fondly, if only because she had led to Kat. The two were indivisible. Not that he had known that at the time. But then one knew so little of anything at the time.